


Two Variations on Galatea

by woodmason



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: F/M, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-15
Updated: 2016-04-15
Packaged: 2018-06-02 11:53:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6565084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/woodmason/pseuds/woodmason
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I had to translate Ovid's story of Pygmalion and Galatea, so I spent a long time thinking about how extremely creepy it is. The first variation exposes the horror of the original; the second is a revenge-fantasy fix-it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fit utilis usu

I knew no speech. I was all body. So it is hard to describe the beginning of my life.

If this were Pygmalion’s story he would devote many words to it. My life was his miracle, Venus’s reward for devotion to beauty. He would say that just as he had shaped my limbs and features with his chisel, so he shaped my warming flesh with his hands and mouth. He was the most blessed of sculptors, blessed like the gods, attendant and participant of the perfection of his work.

I am the work of his hands.

Many times I have thought back on those first moments, remembering what I saw and felt, finding meaning in what was then without meaning.

At the inception there was pain, the banging of my heart and the opening and filling of all my veins. A red blackness. The next thing I felt was his hands. He says he kissed me first, but I don't remember that, nor do I remember the path his palms and fingers took over my skin, only that my skin had life. Pressure, warmth, small hairs yielding, exposure, coolness as he unpinned the cloth he had draped over my marble form and pulled it away from my torso.

Can you understand me when I say I had not yet learned to see? I opened my eyes when he kissed me again, when he opened my mouth to feel its wet uncarved surfaces. I must have seen his eyes, his face; they meant nothing to me then. I did not know that sunlight falls on everything and reveals its coherence, did not know eyes or man or sun, did not understand colors or light. All I understood was red darkness. What I learned, in those moments, was the unpredictability of everything else, of the other.

The other touched me again. The other moved and made sounds. My memory reconstructs them, now, as the name he gave me with my shape, Galatea.

Did he touch my face next? Did he put his fingers in my hair, marvel at the pliancy of my earlobe like a flower unfurling from its bud? Did he pull the cloth from my skin slowly, slowly, to savor the pinkness of my flesh with the blood moving within it?

It is strange now to interpret what I experienced before I even learned to move.

He touched my arms and legs before I ever stirred them, the soft pads of my feet before they ever bore my weight. He touched the inside of me before I ever moved my tongue over my teeth.

I have, over time, comprehended this moment: when he took the pin that had held the cloth over my shoulder, and pressed its point into the skin of my belly. I felt a new kind of pain, there and in my eyes, and they blurred the distinction between myself and other, so I shut them, and the red darkness returned. Then he moved my legs for me, and continued to make me usable by use.

When he had done with me he left, and sent women to me. They marveled, but soon saw that I could do nothing for myself, so they sponged my skin and helped me to sit upright. With prayers to the goddess, they taught me to walk and speak, to feed and clean myself, as though I were an infant, which indeed I was. This work took them many months, even hastened by their petitions and offerings. By the time I attained control of my legs and might have tried to run and dance, the weight of my womb unbalanced me again.

I understood better when my child Paphos leaned against my knee and played with his doll, waving its arms and legs and finally throwing it against the wall. Then I, too, began to plead with the gods.


	2. Tisiphone

When he came in from the sacrifice he was flushed with hope. I could see his parted lips, hear his breath coming fast. Venus is as inventive as her jealous husband, and every sparkle on the surface of my granite body collected sensory information. I would have trembled with eagerness had the stone not kept me still.

I had rested my head against her soft rose-smelling shoulder when she showed me the acts of the mortal Pygmalion in mirror of her shield, and told me of his desire, and of the prayer she wished to grant differently the second time. “Will you do it?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, licking my lips.

Now I lay immobile on the couch, loosely swathed in the fine cloth the sculptor had bought for the idol of his hands. He had carved her to stand, weight on one leg, but in such a graceful pose that lying did not seem unsuitable.

He knelt by me. I held myself in readiness, not in my still-frozen muscles but in the core of me, one flame of passion the goddess had kindled in the stone. I knew what would happen when he touched me.

Yes. His hand on my cheek, my shoulder. Delicious sensation of life rushing in, of a nervous system awakening to wield every joint of this beautiful body.

“Galatea,” he murmured in wonder, touching me everywhere. “Galatea, again!”

The granite was all gone now, and with it the extra skin-senses. Darkness; my eyes were shut. I identified my spine and abdominal muscles, the long bones of my arms and legs. I drew a lungful of air in through my nose; I could smell the incense and heifer’s blood on him.

Breath on my cheek. Yes. He would want the parts of me his chisel had not exposed. His lips soft against mine.

I opened my eyes—he gasped—raised myself a little on one elbow. Smiled a tiny, inviting smile. His mouth returned; gently, he separated my lips with his tongue.

I whipped up on the couch and buried my long, razor-sharp teeth in his throat. He failed to scream. The bright blood burst out and ran down my chin as I stood up with the weight of his body and my own, rejoicing in the strength of my muscles. His hands tore the delicate cloth he had bought for his idol.

I let his body fall, shaking my head so the blood splashed down over my naked breasts. I shrugged my shoulders and let my leathery wings remember their existence.

A curtain parted and a woman stepped towards me, her hands calm and outstretched. “You have answered my prayers,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “My sister would hear what further amends she can make to you.”

“I would hear,” said the woman, “that I was a god’s mistake, and not her wisdom.”

“Come with me, then.”

She took my hand, stepped with her left foot in the pool of blood as we left. Outside, I took her in my arms.

A youth ran out of the house behind us, halting at the shadow of my outstretched wings. “Mother!” he cried. “Father is—”

“Paphos,” she said, “Mourn your father well. I am going.”

She turned to me, leaned her cheek against my rank shoulder, and we flew.

**Author's Note:**

> In Ovid's telling (see the Latin and English together [here](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Pygmalion_and_Galatea)), Pygmalion is a misogynistic sculptor who avoids women but falls in love with a statue he carved himself. Venus answers his prayer to grant him a wife just like his beautiful image, by bringing the statue to life at Pygmalion's touch. Ovid gives the story a happy ending: the birth of a son, Paphos, nine months after Galatea's awakening.
> 
> I think the creepiest line in the whole poem is the one that compares Galatea's ivory-to-skin transformation with wax being worked in warm hands: "fit utilius usu," made useful by use.
> 
> Venus is the goddess of love; Tisiphone, who does not appear in Ovid's story, is one of the three Furies. Her sisters Alecto and Megaera represent implacable anger and jealous rage; Tisiphone embodies bloody revenge.


End file.
